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Raven Software open sources Jedi Knight games

Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast multiplayer running under Windows

Following Disney's announcement yesterday that it would be closing the LucasArts game development and publishing studio it had acquired as part of its takeover of Lucasfilm, Raven Software has open sourced the two Jedi Knight games it developed (which were published by LucasArts) as a tribute to the company. Raven has released the source code for Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy under the GPLv2. Both games use the id Tech 3 engine which was open sourced by id Software in 2005.

The Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast single player campaign

Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were successors to the original Jedi Knight game which was developed and published by LucasArts itself and released in 1997 as a sequel to the popular Star Wars: Dark Forces, the first official first person shooter set in the Star Wars universe. In a statement given to Kotaku Australia, a Raven spokesperson said: "Raven is sad to hear about the closing of LucasArts today, we respected them and enjoyed working with them over the years". The company also said it was releasing the source code for its two games "for people to enjoy and play with" as a gift to the fanbase of the Jedi Knight games and as a tribute to LucasArts.

The source code for both Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (originally released in 2002) and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (from 2003) is available from SourceForge. Both code releases comprise single player and multiplayer components, including the server components used to run matches over a LAN and over the internet. Both games run under Windows and Mac OS X, but a community port to Linux seems likely as the id Tech 3 engine has already been ported to the platform.